Client devices such as smart phones are used to conduct financial and other types of secure transactions. For example, users of client devices may make online purchases from online merchants and request that payments for the purchases be made from the users' payment account with a payment service provider such as PayPal, Inc. of San Jose, Calif. To facilitate the purchase or payment transactions, applications running on the client devices may be supported by the payment service provider and used by the users to conduct the transactions. However, there are times when it is desirable to disable the applications, or certain features of the applications, such as when the applications or when certain features are no longer supported by the payment service provider. At other times, it may be desirable to terminate live sessions of the applications running on the client devices. Conventionally, users of the applications are burdened with initiating such action. This need for user intervention creates inconvenience for the users and support problems for the service providers when the users fail to take the action. Accordingly, there is a need for a simple way of disabling applications running on client devices.